Balli Kaur Jaswal

Balli Kaur Jaswal was raised in Japan, Russia and the Philippines as her father moved through postings for Singapore's foreign ministry, and taught secondary English in Australia and at an international school in Istanbul; writing became her full-time job in 2016. Her first novel, Inheritance, won the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelist award, and Sugarbread reached the Epigram Books Fiction Prize shortlist. A 2017 novel about Punjabi widows in Southall who enrol in a writing class and begin swapping stories of their own carried her name well past Singapore and was picked up by Reese Witherspoon's book club. Now You See Us, published in 2023, follows Corazon, Donita and Angel, three Filipina domestic workers in Singapore, after another Filipina worker is accused of killing her employer. Jaswal has said the book grew from a real case that Singapore and the Philippines discussed in very different terms.